Unearthed
by ProfessorPalmarosa
Summary: Upon Team Minato's return to Konoha, the Uchiha Clan take a moment to mourn the loss of one of their own. However, after noticing Kakashi's new sharingan, the Konohagakure Military Police Force begin to suspect Obito's death may not have been an accident.
1. Chapter 1

Kakashi's hands shook as he sucked in an anxious breath. It burned like fire and stung like nettles. Despite the fact he was well-versed in all the shinobi rules and regulations, he'd broken the 25th rule at Kannabi Bridge. Rin told him it was okay to cry, but she held it together. He was sure she cried in private later and for that, she truly was the better shinobi.

They were seated together in the KMPF station, waiting for their scheduled interview with the chief of the military police. The police chief, Fugaku, was also the head of the Uchiha Clan and therefore the head of Obito's extended family. Kakashi wasn't sure how they were related, nor did he have the nerve to ask.

He'd heard about Fugaku before through Minato-sensei. According to him, Fugaku was a highly decorated elite jōnin and a very serious, straight-laced man. But most importantly, as one would expect from a clan head, he cared about his people.

' _That means it doesn't matter if he's an uncle or a distant cousin. He'll probably come down as hard on us as he would if we'd killed his son._ '

Rin looped her left hand's fingers to his right hand in an attempt to comfort him as they waited. "It wasn't your fault," she whispered to the silver-haired boy. "Obito pushed you out of the way so he could save you."

' _How can you say that so calmly?_ ' he wanted to ask her. ' _Wasn't he your best friend?_ ' He'd always seen the two of them together, even before they started at the Ninja Academy. If Nohara Rin went somewhere, there was a guarantee that Uchiha Obito was somewhere nearby. He followed her like a puppy: always happy in her presence, always thrilled to see her.

"And he gave you his sharingan. Kakashi…" She hissed in a breath and squeezed his hand. "Whatever Fugaku _-taichou_ says in there, don't let him talk you into giving the eye back. That was Obito's gift to _you._ "

"You knew him better than I did." He turned to face her. "What kind of relationship did he have with the rest of the clan?"

Rin's eyes grew big as she slowly shook her head. "I don't know," she whispered. "I only ever met his grandma."

"Hatake Kakashi?" The boy lifted his head to see an Uchiha man with a firm, sour face and hair as light and unruly as his own. He wasn't sure who this guy was, but he wasn't Fugaku. He did, however, recognize the surly long-haired teenager beside him, though. Uchiha Inabi: a _senpai_ from the graduating class three years ahead of them. "Interview Room B. Come on. We're wasting daylight."

"I was told we had an appointment with the chief of the military police," Kakashi remarked. "Who are you?"

"Uchiha Yashiro," the man replied, arms folded. "I'm the lieutenant commander for the KMPF homicide division. Inabi's my apprentice. We're—"

"Homicide?!" Rin had been calm up to that moment. "No! You have it all wrong! Kakashi—"

"Do we?" Inabi asked, flashing his sharingan at the two. "See, we thought that originally, too. Then…" He tilted his head toward Kakashi, pointing at his left eye. "We have reason to suspect foul play. We'll interview the two of you separately and see how much of the story matches. Nohara-san?"

"Eh?"

" _You'll_ be talking with Fugaku-taichou by yourself. Wait patiently."

…

She worried for Kakashi, wondering just how bad the interrogation was going. Even from inside the clan head's office, she could hear Yashiro and Inabi shouting. While she couldn't hear her teammate, she worried for him. "Do they really think he murdered Obito?"

The man across from her seemed calm and collected, though visibly saddened by the news that another one of his people died in this pointless war. "Please see it from our perspective, Nohara _-san_."

She blinked her eyes. "You know my name?"

"I know more about you than just your name," Fugaku confirmed. "I've heard all about you from Tokiko." The girl seemed confused. "Obito's grandmother. She confirmed that the two of you have been best friends since you were four years old."

"Yeah…" And apparently he'd loved her, too. ' _I didn't know until he said something about it._ ' Obito had always been there: both for the good times and the bad. She'd loved him, too, but not in the same way he loved her. They'd known each other for as far back as she could remember. It was why she'd seen him more like a brother.

' _I didn't know he had a crush on me until he died. Either I'm dense or I just didn't want to see it_.' Did that make her a bad friend? A bad person, even?

The air conditioner kicked on, blowing freon and slightly mildewed air into the office. It was old and slightly run-down. A large Uchiha crest painted over a stained wall on the side. For each crack in the plaster, Fugaku placed a photo. Rin leaned a bit to her right, squinting her eyes to get a closer look. Sure enough, Obito and his grandmother were in a few of the pictures. "How well did you know him, Fugaku _-taichou_?"

The man gave her a sad smile. "Not as well as I would have liked," he confessed, "but when I made the announcement of his death at the last clan meeting, our older clan members were devastated. You see, Nohara-san…even though he didn't have any immediate family other than his grandmother, a lot of our elderly Uchiha outlived their families. It was brought to my attention that he visited them regularly."

"He…" her eyes welled up with tears. "He used to tell us he was late because he was helping some granny or old man." They weren't excuses? They were real? How many would she see at the funeral?

Fugaku had known a significant number of lonely children over the years. Sanjo, a former _senpai_ of his, had run wild in the clan and pulled pranks to get attention because his parents worked long hours and didn't have time for him. Yuka, his lieutenant commander for the KMPF vice division, had fiercely fought anyone who got too close to her because her parents were disgraced in the First Great War. Kaede, who had been like a cousin to him in his youth, was so desperate for someone to love her that she intentionally had a teenage pregnancy.

"Obito was a lonely boy, from what I gathered. He turned his attention to the elderly because they were, aside from you, the only people who treated him like he was worth their while. I talked to each of them before asking you and your teammate to come to the station, because I wanted to make sure I asked the right questions."

Rin reached for a tissue so she could blow her nose. In front of Kakashi and Minato-sensei, she never cried. It wasn't the proper place to do so. Here, though? She couldn't help it. If any place was the right place to cry, it had to be with Obito's family. "I wish you'd known him the way I knew him," she confessed. "He was a sweet, happy-go-lucky, considerate goofball."

"Was he?" Fugaku sighed, shaking his head. "Maybe he showed that side of himself to you, but I didn't see it. Tokiko-san's house isn't too far from mine. Sometimes I'd see him come back from a mission in tears." Rin was shocked. "His grandmother informed me that most of the stress came from your other teammate."

"Kakashi?"

"Apparently, Kakashi bullied him. At the very least, he belittled his accomplishments and questioned his effectiveness as a ninja. Whatever he did or said—"

"Kakashi's not…" Rin insistently shook her head. "He's just a stickler for the rules, sir. He isn't mean-spirited or cruel. I don't think it was ever his intention to—oh god. Is that why Yashiro-san and Inabi-san think he murdered him?" And judging from the way Fugaku looked at her, he seemed to suspect it, too. "That's not what happened. Obito pushed him out of the way, trying to save him. The foundation collapsed and crushed him. Before he died, he…" She cried. "He asked me to implant his sharingan in Kakashi's left eye as a gift.

"I promise there was no foul play. I swear on my _life_ I'm not teammates with a murderer. Kakashi may be blunt and insensitive at points, but he isn't the monster Yashiro-san thinks he is. Obito was my best friend, sir. I wouldn't lie about something like this. He's—"

"There's one last matter, then. Like the Hyūga Clan, Aburame Clan, and so many others, the Uchiha Clan never leaves a body behind. And if the corpse can't be moved, we have to destroy the sharingan and take it back with us. Nohara-san, Kannabi Bridge _can't_ be his final resting place."

"You want to return there? I can write Minato-sensei. He's still out there. I could write him and—"

"I'm going myself," Fugaku insisted, "along with some of my strongest, most able-bodied people. You and Kakashi need to show us where he is."

"I—"

"This isn't just about putting Obito's spirit to rest or giving his grandmother a place to properly mourn him. It's about making sure that no one from Iwagakure, Kumogakure, or any other enemy village of ours gets their hands on an Uchiha, dead or alive."

…

 _'Did I die?'_

Worn-out and exhausted, he opened his one remaining eye. As that eye adjusted to the dim light, he caught sight of a sharingan staring him back. His vision sharpened and more details became available. The sharingan-user was an ancient old man with unruly white hair and a grave, somber expression.

Next, his sense of touch began to return. An awful needles-and-pins sensation replaced the numbness. More than half his body felt like a foot that had fallen asleep, paired with the awful aches of torn ligaments and broken bone. Even the sharp gasp he took in hurt in a way he'd never experienced before. "Where am I?"

"In between this life and the next, young Uchiha."

' _What a cryptic, unnecessary, bullshit answer. Am I dead or not!?_ ' But something caught his attention. "Your eyes, _ojii-chan_ …you're an Uchiha, too?" To that, he got a more straightforward answer in the form of a slow nod. "You said we're between this life and the next? Where are we, then? It's dark. I can't see well. Who are you, anyway? It's not like you're Death himself, right?"

But there was a scythe: a sickle just like the mythical grim reaper. "NO! NO, I DON'T WANT TO DIE YET!" Not when Rin finally knew how he felt. Not when he and Kakashi were finally starting to get along. Not when Minato-sensei was willing to help him accomplish his dream. Everything was finally starting to go right for him, all up to this point. Why did it have to end now?

He had to be Death: specifically a vision of death for Uchiha in particular. What else could he be with the scythe and the sharingan and that haggard face? "W-wait…I've spent my whole life looking out for the elderly and taking care of them. Sure, I broke a few rules here and there, and I caused a little mischief and pulled some pranks, but I'm sure all the good I did outweighs the bad and…and…please…please don't take me to Hell…"

His heart refused to slow down. Between the pain and the fear and the sheer exhaustion, he was afraid it would give out. But if he died, then what would it matter? "Ow…"

"The fact that you still feel pain means you're still alive." Was that sarcasm? Was this old man mocking him? "But it's a miracle that you did. I'm amazed that you weren't completely crushed under those boulders. I found you in an underground passageway I was using. The crumbled rock collapsed it. Half your body was crushed, though."

He felt it. Half his body felt like hamburger meat and probably looked like it, too. "So you saved me. Thank you…"

"Oh, it's a little early to be thanking me. I expect you to pay me back for this. After all, didn't you say you always help old people?"

So what did he need? There was the dotty old Yamanaka lady who kept forgetting what was on her grocery list. There was the old Akimichi man who needed to be turned over twice a day or he'd get bedsores. Or that lonely Sarutobi lady who wore enough makeup to look like a clown. She just wanted an excuse to have a young man clean her gutters.

His grandmother had diabetes. He knew where the insulin was and how to administer it. There was no telling what was wrong with this old man. Arthritis? Diabetes? Glaucoma? Incontinence?

"What do you want me to do?" Even though nobody else was in there, so far as Obito knew, he lowered his voice out of consideration. "Is it bathroom stuff?"

"That would be nice." But not a definite yes.

"But I can't stay forever, okay? Since I'm still alive, I have to go back to Konoha. There's a war going on. I just awoke my sharingan. So now, once I'm better, I can protect my teammates better than ever before." He ached all over, but he was optimistic. Things were going to change for the better. This was just a setback.

' _I can't wait to see the look on Rin's face when I come back. Or Kakashi's, for that matter. But maybe I should ease into it before I see my grandma. I don't want to give her a heart attack. Maybe I can talk to Fugaku-taichou or someone in the KMPF first and see what they want to do. It'll be okay, though. It'll work out. It—_ '

Why did the old man look so sad? Was he that excited to have someone look after him? Was he _that_ lonely? Before Obito could ask, the geezer sighed. "Protect your teammates, huh? With that body of yours, you'll never be a shinobi again."

"But I finally got this eye! Doesn't that mean I'll be able to work better with my team in combo attacks?" He was still useful, wasn't he? Were the injuries really that bad? He'd always assumed that if half his body was crushed or torn apart, that it would be enough to send a body into shock and die. He hadn't died. It felt more aggravatingly numb than it did painful. Wasn't that a good sign?

"It's time to wake up and face reality. Nothing goes as planned. The longer you live, the more you realize…there's nothing but pain, suffering, and grief in this world." And then the rant went on…and on…and _on_ …with seemingly no end.

Sometimes the elderly tended to ramble, but all he could gather from all this was that his rescuer was an angry man who had clearly been wronged in the past. Whatever happened to him, Obito felt sorry for him, but he couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong in all this. ' _He's a missing ninja. A rogue shinobi. I really shouldn't be here. I have to go. I have to get out of here. I…I can't stay…_ '

…

"Do you really think those kids are going to be up for the challenge?"

Fugaku put his paper down to see Inabi in his office. "They're not _that_ much younger than you," the Uchiha head reminded him. "I have half a mind to have you as my second on this squad. Right now, we can spare it. Not too many Konoha shinobi have committed war crimes in the Third War."

They'd run rampant in the Second, leaving a mess for the military police force to clean up. The Second Great Shinobi War had been terrible enough to drive Fugaku's mother, the prior clan head, to drink. Then again, the clan had done that to her in general. She'd struggled with the role and grown bitter by the end. He'd had no such problems as clan head.

"You knew Obito growing up, didn't you?"

Inabi slowly nodded his head and sighed. "I wasn't all that nice to him."

"Imagine that." It was sarcasm, of course. Working with Inabi for the past six months had given Fugaku enough time to recognize a bully when he saw one. Inabi was an angry kid with a lot of issues. He internalized a lot of his rage, bottling it up until somebody younger, more sensitive, and more unfortunate came along at the wrong time to watch him erupt. "Do you have any issues with participating? Because if you do, Lieutenant Yuka voiced an interest in—"

" _Fuck_ Yuka," Inabi hissed. "I'm going. That kid deserves a proper burial and to be laid to rest with his own people. That, and…permission to speak freely, sir?"

"You have so far, Inabi. I don't see why asking for permission's going to make any difference."

"I still don't trust Kakashi. I think it's important that whoever you pick to go with you, he needs to come from Homicide. Once we find the corpse, we can give it a once-over and see if any foul play actually happened."

"The Nohara girl swore he pushed Kakashi out of the way."

"She has a crush."

"That was her _best friend_ , Inabi." Fugaku sighed. "Just don't start any drama on the way over there. Understood?"

…

It was too much to ask. One hour into their expedition, Inabi called Kakashi a friend killer. Kakashi didn't correct him or try to stand up for himself. Every time the team stopped and tried to evaluate whether it would be wiser to set up camp or just take more soldier pills, Kakashi merely stayed quiet. Fugaku hadn't heard him so much as utter a word unless he was asked a direct question Rin couldn't answer.

"Of course you'd vote to get some fucking sleep, you little bastard," Inabi hissed in the sleeping bag next to him. "The more time we spend dicking around trying to get to the debris, the more time the mice and worms have a chance to do a number on the corpse."

Rin squirmed. Kakashi didn't so much as roll over. He remained where he was, staring off toward the woods listlessly.

"And it's _summertime_ ," Inabi whispered. "If the animals don't fuck him up, the heat will. I'd rather be able to recognize him and _not_ puke, but I suppose that doesn't matter to you. If he stinks so bad that we can't go near him, then—"

"Shut _up!_ " Rin hissed, finally lifting her head. Her eyes were filled with tears and her cheeks turned pink from embarrassment, grief, shame, and rage. "What is your problem, anyway!? Didn't I already tell you that Kakashi didn't kill him!? He's not a murderer, he's—"

"Rin." The voice was so weak and distant. Fugaku could barely hear him at all. "It's okay. He isn't saying anything I _don't_ deserve to hear."

Her mouth hung open in disbelief. "No. I don't believe that. I was there! I saw him push you! I heard him when he said he—"

"It doesn't matter. I still left him to die."

Rin hiccupped, choking her breath on a sob that she refused to let come out. ' _Don't you realize what that makes me!?_ ' she thought. ' _Don't you think I want to beat myself up over this, too?!_ ' Unlike Kakashi, she'd actually been close with him. ' _I told him I'd always watch out for him. I'd help him with his dream and keep him healthy so he could accomplish it. He could do anything, so long as I was there to fix his messes and stitch up whatever he tore apart. But I'm…_ '

When it finally came out, it was loud and ugly. If she closed her eyes, she imagined it again and again. The boulders. The blood. The sensation of feeling his hand go cold. Those awful images began to blend with her fondest memories.

They were four years old and he was jealous that girls got to start their training earlier by going to kunoichi preschool. Obito whined about it, saying it wasn't fair and that _he_ wanted to go. So Rin decided to teach him the basics of making bouquets, trying to hammer home the point that, no, he shouldn't be jealous. That it was boring. He'd come back the following day with a hodgepodge of flowers, roots and dirt still attached, and presented them with a big cheesy grin. Then Rin's neighbor (who took great pride in her garden) threatened to call the KMPF and get the little scamp booked on theft because one of the flowers in the set was her prized iris.

They were seven years old and watching the top of their class spar against the Third Hokage, all in good fun. Rin praised Kakashi for being so talented and gifted. Obito just sat there, picked his nose, and wiped a snot nugget on his pants. Then he sniffed his hand and began to chew a fingernail. Afterward, Rin pulled him aside for an experiment. She cut an apple in half and made him lick one side. Then she put both slices back in a bag and showed him two days later how many more germs the licked one had than the clean one. He'd carried hand sanitizer in his pocket ever since.

They were nine years old. Obito ran to the Academy, realizing he was unforgivably late for the graduation ceremony, and nearly lost his composure in front of everyone when he realized the ceremony was completely over. Rin let him have a good cry so he could get it out of his system. According to Obito, he was late because an older lady in the clan fell down a flight of stairs and broke her hip. He'd taken her to the hospital and waited in the emergency room with her until a doctor saw her. Then, without skipping a beat, Rin held up his graduation certificate and headband. He'd hugged her so tight and told her she was a life-saver.

They were eleven years old. Obito threw his brand new chūnin vest into the air and cheered with excitement, even though he was still black and blue from Maito Gai kicking his ass in the one-on-one fight. Rin told him to calm down and tried to massage a knot out of his back. The whole time, he laughed and insisted he was fine. Despite that, the following day, he called in sick with Minato-sensei and passed out at his grandma's house.

They were thirteen. She held his severed eyeball in her blood-covered hands. He whispered her name in a broken voice and she did all she could to hold back her tears. The last thing she could do to look out for his best interest was to make him swallow every last painkiller she had in the medical bag. She'd expected Kakashi to tell her not to do that, that there was no point in giving it to someone who was on the verge of death anyway, but he didn't. Kakashi couldn't even look at them as Rin held her best friend's hand and felt the fingers go cold.

As the grief hit her like water from a burst dam, she let it consume her. Curling up into a ball, she wrapped her arms around herself in a self-soothing hug, only to feel a hand touch her back. She tensed up, afraid Inabi had more morbid words to throw at Kakashi and herself, but it was Obito's clan head instead. "Sorry," she sobbed. "If I'm too loud, then—"

He reached for her shoulder, nudging her to follow him away from the other two. This conversation needed to happen in private.

…

"I've only been home for three months," Fugaku confessed to Rin. "Before then, I'd spent the past six months in an Iwagakure prison camp. Several jōnin were captured during a raid."

And come to think of it, now that she paid closer attention to the Uchiha head, he still looked gaunt. There was something dead and glassy in his eyes. "I can only imagine what kinds of horrors you witnessed in that camp, sir. I'm sorry to hear that."

' _If he's still recovering, then he should have sent somebody else. Yashiro-san, maybe. Or another lieutenant commander._ ' Rin took a deep breath and reached to stroke the older man's back. "I'm a medical ninja, Fugaku _-taichou_. If you need anything during this mission, don't hesitate to—"

"My brother in law was in there with me," he interrupted. "Some of us banded together to incite a revolt in the camp, thinking it would be enough to get out. He took a blow that was meant for me and was badly injured. We still ran. For several days, we fended for ourselves in the wild and made use of whatever we could find. Yori, though…"

In his sleep, he always saw Yori's face and remembered the screams. "We didn't have a medic. If we'd had one, then maybe we could have saved him." The gaping hole in his side began to stink after a couple of days. A nasty brownish-red sap-like substance oozed into his clothes and flies followed him everywhere. "By the sixth day, he was delirious and screaming. We realized that if we kept him in the party, his screams would alert the enemy as to where we were."

Rin's brown eyes turned wide. "You put him out of his misery, didn't you?" she whispered. "You had to kill him for the sake of the group. Sir, I'm so sorry. This must have opened up a bunch of wounds for you. We—"

"Did you do everything you could?" He sounded like a tired man of eighty-one rather than a young, healthy thirty-one.

"…yes," she confessed. "We couldn't free him. Half his body was crushed. Even though Obito told me he couldn't feel anything, I gave him all the pain medicine we had left so he could at least die peacefully." But judging from the dead and damned look in Fugaku _-taichou's_ eyes, Uchiha Yori didn't get painkillers because none were available. She wouldn't ask him how Yori died. Not unless he volunteered. "Why did you want to tell me this?"

"Because even three months later, I'm still thinking about it. I can't go a single day where I don't see him in my dreams or random moments when I'm alone. And in those moments, it's painful. I keep myself up late at night and wonder what I could have done differently and if there was any way I could have saved him. I even wonder if it would have been better if I'd taken the hit for him and died in his place.

"Nohara-san, I can see your teammate is having similar thoughts. I only managed to hold it together because I have an entire clan to think about. I can keep myself together for their sake. I know who Kakashi is and who his father was. You and your sensei are all he has left. He'll need to lean on you a little more as he recovers and gets his life back together. And maybe you should lean on him a little, too."

"Fugaku-taichou?"

"Hm?"

"Does the ache ever lessen? Does the world ever stop feeling so empty?"

There was a long silence from the older shinobi. Finally, he sighed. "I don't know," he confessed. "I like to think that it will, but it hasn't eased up for me."

…

"This is it, then?" Inabi pulled out a scroll and undid the seal containing all the excavation tools the team would need to unearth Obito's worldly remains. "This is the place where he died?"

"I smell him," Kakashi confessed, still not wanting to make much eye contact with either Uchiha in the party. To confirm his words, Rin nodded. "He's under that pile of boulders. Rin…? If you don't want to look at him or see him like that, then—"

"I'm a medical ninja, Kakashi," she reminded him. "I've seen corpses before." But this would be her first time seeing somebody she knew as one. "It won't be easy, but I'm prepared. Maybe you should sit this out."

The white-haired boy shook his head. "I can't do that. I promised him I'd watch out for you. What if the ground becomes unsteady again? What if more rocks fall? What if—"

"You're both helping," Inabi barked, throwing a shovel to the younger teens. He was only sixteen, but carried himself with all the hardness and malice of an embittered adult. "Nobody's sitting this one out. Now come on. He's not getting any fresher."

"Inabi…" Fugaku didn't snap at him or use a threatening tone. Merely stating the older teen's name was enough to make him pipe down and obey his leader. "Alright, Kakashi. We're trusting your nose."

' _You can do it, Kakashi,_ ' Rin thought. ' _Take the lead and bring him home._ '

The low rumble of a thunderstorm mixed with the scent of petrichor and cement dust set the atmosphere. The first few droplets came in a gentle drizzle, only for the sky to bottom out and spill its contents in a relentless torrent. The earth steamed in the late summer heat, vapors coming out of the ground.

But as they started to move the stones, Rin began to feel her anxiety build. ' _It's been days. It may have rained more than this one time._ ' When a startled colony of mice scurried out of the disrupted boulders, she froze and had to take several minutes to calm herself down again. The thought of Obito's friendly face being gnawed apart by vermin turned her stomach.

And just as she began to think she had herself put together again, Fugaku and Inabi moved a blood-stained stone out of the way, then another. "Oh god." She had to sit down, if only to stop the shakes from becoming too severe.

…

Drip, _drip_. Puddles from what had started to feel like _heaven_ above trickled down into the chamber. It was cold, trickling onto his bare skin and causing him to shiver. It was damp down here: cold and wet and smelly. It wasn't even an old man smell so much as a light _rotten_ scent. He kept wanting to throw up, but feared what it would do to his organs.

But fear wasn't going to keep him in place. Obito squirmed to the edge of his bed, trying to make his way to the earth floor.

"If you want to leave so badly, then go ahead…assuming you can even move." It sounded like a taunt: a _jeer_. The old fart was egging him on.

' _Fuck you, geezer. I'm gonna do it._ '

He'd put every last bit of effort into it, even though there were staples digging into his stitched-up skin and his internal organs had been fully rearranged by someone who was definitely and absolutely _not_ a medical professional. Each motion made his kidneys and intestines feel like they were going to burst. ' _Rin can fix this. Rin can fix anything!_ '

She'd stitched up open gashes, cauterized puncture wounds, mended his bones, fixed torn tendons, and so much more. In another five years—ten at most, Obito figured—she'd catch up to Tsunade-sama and go down in the history books as the best medical ninja Konoha ever had.

And if Rin could heal his wounds and patch him up good as new like she'd always done before, then maybe his career wasn't over. Maybe it was still in the works that he could become a jōnin like Kakashi and eventually surpass him. And if that were possible, then maybe Minato-sensei could help him with his dream of becoming Hokage.

He had to believe that he'd see everyone again, but it was also critical that he keep believing that Rin or another medic could reverse the damage and get him out in the war again, good as new. ' _Even if it hurts like a bitch, even if every last part of my body feels like it's on fire, I can't stay here. I can't!_ '

He knew every old person in the Hidden Leaf, especially the old Uchihas. This man was a rogue shinobi. He'd been on the run for a long time. And when he told the boy who he actually was, he'd been terrified.

…

Fugaku's body had seen better days. At Inabi's insistence, he took breaks from the strenuous and daunting task of moving boulders so he could recuperate. Rin went back and forth to a nearby stream to sanitize some drinking water for the group. She even mixed a fruit-flavored vitamin packet into the water to add a bit more flavor.

"I drank these a lot as a kid," Inabi confessed. "My mother mixed these up in the summer so I wouldn't lose electrolytes after training outside all day."

"Obito liked the orange flavor," Rin admitted. "I never much cared for it. I liked the cherry better," but she didn't think she could stand the sight of the cherry flavor right now. It looked too much like blood. "What about you, Kakashi?"

"You kids know they're all the same flavor, right?" Fugaku mumbled, taking a sip. "They're all _sugar-flavored_. Everything else is just a food dye." But he did feel a bit revitalized after taking the time to drink it. "We're almost there, team. The boulders we've moved over the past hour have had blood on them, so I know we're getting warmer."

Then he found the torn remains of the jacket. A sad, blood-soaked arm flapped like a flag when the wind blew by. Rin caught it before the storm carried it off forever. "Here." She offered it to Kakashi. "Will smelling this help you find him faster?" He nodded his head and went back to the excavation site.

More things were found. More clothing. Some hair. Rotting skin. The worst discovery out of the whole lot was Obito's decomposing right arm which had torn out of socket at the shoulder joint.

"Something's not adding up," Inabi whispered to Fugaku, watching as Kakashi kept digging. "Where's the rest of the body? There's no fucking way an animal could go in there and take the rest of the corpse out of the stone pile without disturbing it." Another loud crack of thunder mixed with the bright flash of lightning.

"Wait…" Kakashi sniffed the air again and began digging more frantically than before. "Wait!"

"What is it?!" Rin grabbed her shovel and hurriedly started digging beside him. Within seconds, the two KMPF officers were doing the same. "What is it, Kakashi?"

"Once you put the arm away from the site, I stopped smelling death. He's…" His heart fluttered with excitement. "Rin, I think he's _alive_ down there."

"You better not be fucking with me, Hatake," Inabi snapped. "That's my _cousin_ you're talking about."

But Fugaku could hear something. _Voices_. ' _Oh god. If he's telling the truth and the boy's still alive, then…_ '

…

It didn't matter that he hit the ground and couldn't walk. Even if he had to crawl the entire way back to the Hidden Leaf like a worm, he'd do it. He had to see everyone again. It wasn't fair. And as Obito writhed pitifully across the ground, Madara simply watched with morbid amusement in his one visible eye.

"There are no exits. Neither one of us is in any condition to leave this place. Not with our bodies."

The next time he squirmed, he felt a stitch tear. A thin trail of blood oozed out, soaking into his pants and leaving a red streak on the scraped earth. He felt rocks dig into his skin. A few even found a pocket where the stitches ripped and began sinking into his body. It felt like he was being ripped apart, but staying here meant death.

Then he felt dirt start to crumble from above. It was slight and subtle, probably nothing more than a badger burrowing through the earth. He wished in that moment he could at least latch on with two useful arms, so he could dig. Even if he had to chew earth through his teeth and eat dirt to get out, he'd do it.

"If you move too much, the tissue I went through all the trouble to attach to you will slew off." Madara sounded so smug, so sure of himself, so absolutely affirmative that he was right. "Would you really rather die?"

"SHUT UP! WHAT WOULD YOU POSSIBLY WANT WITH A KID?!"

Madara's mouth opened, ready to give another high-and-mighty remark, but the bottom of the ceiling opened up. Rainwater, dirt, mud, and clouded-over sunlight spilled into the den. More stones fell, pummeling the statue. The old man covered his face with his arms and curled up, trying to defend himself from the falling earth. The Gedo statue wasn't as fortunate.

The loud roar of the storm assaulted Obito's ears as the muddy rainwater poured all over him. ' _This is it, then. I'm gonna drown. I'm gonna fucking drown before anyone can—_ '

"OBITO!?"

That voice. It couldn't be. "RIN!" he yelled, lifting his head as high as he could. "RIN, HELP! HE'S CRAZY! HE—"

Rin jumped into the pit, Kakashi right alongside her. As Obito's eyes adjusted to the onslaught of light, he saw two other figures and recognized the KMPF uniform immediately. His clan's elite all joined the police force. His grandma even made noises about seeing him in one of those goofy getups someday, but he recognized Inabi and—

" _You_ came to get me?" his one remaining eye went wide. "I thought you were still recovering from what happened to—"

Very gently, Fugaku picked the boy up. With half his body missing, Obito felt so light. At this point, there wasn't much point in putting on a good show of trying to play it tough. The whole ordeal had terrified him more than anything else in his life.

But it was over. He'd get to go home, see his grandma again, and recover. "It was _horrible_ ," he sobbed, using his one remaining arm to hug onto his clan head. "That guy…that guy says he's Uchiha Madara and…and…he was gonna keep me down here forever and…"

Rin squinted, moving closer to the old man, paying attention to the large nodes on his back. "You're using this fixture for life support. Aren't you?" she asked.

…

It was so fucking weird, seeing that creepy old geezer in Konoha General Hospital's bright fluorescent lighting. Upon the Hokage's orders, there wasn't much point in executing someone so old. Instead, Madara's body was subjected to a series of chakra seals to suppress any usage, even for the sharingan. He'd probably spend the remainder of his days chained up to a hospital bed, but at least he'd have proper medical care.

Obito could only hope that if he saw for himself how far the village had come since he'd left it, that maybe he'd come around. "Don't worry. I'll still come visit you once I'm out of here," he offered. "You're family, you know? You'll probably have a _lot_ of Uchiha coming in here to ask you questions."

"You mean…" the old man rasped. "They'll _interrogate_ me. Your clan head, Fugaku, informed me what that uniform meant. I know they're the police now." That had happened shortly after he left.

"I told them that you rescued me."

"You also called me crazy."

"Lots of old folks have dementia, Madara- _ojii_. It's nothing to be ashamed of. It's quite—"

"Nonsense!" he hissed, trying to pull an IV out of his arm. "I shouldn't be here! I can't fix this horrible world from a hospital bed! I…I have to get out. I can't stay. I…"

' _Now you know how it feels,_ ' Obito thought, ' _not that I'm going anywhere anytime soon, either._ '

He'd cried for hours after Rin informed him that she wasn't a miracle worker. And while the Konoha medics would certainly try to perform a series of reconstructive surgeries to get him at least _mobile_ again, the likelihood of him ever being capable of returning to active duty was next to nil. He had a civilian life ahead of him, probably: one with chronic pain, a fucked up face, a missing arm, and the crushing guilt of knowing he made his best friend worry herself sick over him.

" _Ojii-_ san?" Madara let loose a faint, slow groan. "How…how _did_ you plan to fix things, anyway..?"


	2. Chapter 2

When the Konoha council first approached him with this information, Sarutobi Hiruzen refused to believe it. So, too, did the man sitting across from him in the central office. Even on days when Utatane Koharu and Mitokado Homura were out of office, Shimura Danzō made a point of making his presence known.

For all the bright and prosperous glow that Hiruzen spread across the village, Danzō was forever his shadow: doing all the dirty work where the sun never touched. "It's hard to wrap my head around," the Third Hokage confessed. "We were children when the First Hokage fought Madara. And we aren't exactly young men _now_."

Danzō seemed slightly insulted by that remark. "We're in our fifties, Sarutobi," he countered, leering at his old friend. "That doesn't exactly make us relics, either."

With all the advances in modern medicine, that pretty much put them at the later side of middle age. He'd hold onto that as long as he could, before the wear and tear of arthritis damaged his body worse than three great shinobi wars already had.

"Do you think it's possible, though? Whoever the old man is, he _is_ an Uchiha. Did we have anyone else go missing since the First Great War?" Hiruzen tried to conjure up any names and faces in his brain, but none of the missing persons who came to mind would have been the right age.

Uchiha Fugaku's father went missing ten years ago, but Uchiha Sarani had only been about ten years Hiruzen's senior. Plus, he'd been a short man with glasses and skin that was far more sun-kissed than the geriatric ghost of Uchihas past. Everyone else had been accounted for as dead…

But therein was the problem: Hashirama testified to the whole of the village that he managed to take Madara down. They had a dead man on life support in Konoha General. And whoever he happened to be, he was a _nukenin_. Some facts simply couldn't be overlooked.

"No," Danzō admitted. "I pulled a few strings in Archives to search birth certificates, death certificates, and missing shinobi accounts in older bingo books. That turned up nothing, so I contacted the Konohagakure Military Police Force regarding any cold cases or missing Uchiha. Fugaku assured me no names were unaccounted for that would match this man's age. More than that, he _claims_ to be Madara."

And both men could agree that was the most terrifying prospect of all. Homura was combing over the certificates in Archives again, just to confirm. Koharu was about ready to give an order to have the grave opened and the body exhumed just to confirm a corpse was in there.

But while it was alright for his counselors to panic, Hiruzen couldn't permit himself to do the same. A Hokage had to be the very definition of calm and collected, even in the face of dangerous information. "You have him under around-the-clock observation, don't you?"

"Naturally." Danzō stretched back in his chair and sighed. "Whoever he is, his chakra is sealed. He's also handcuffed to his medical bed and unable to leave the hospital. He's too old and frail for prison, but a hospital isn't _that_ much better, is it?" He would personally prefer to go to prison than a hospital, because only the latter forced him to face his own mortality every day.

"No. No, I suppose it isn't. And if he really is Madara—"

"Then I suppose we'll find out what his clan _really_ thinks of him, won't we?"

…

Every time Obito woke up, he found more "get well soon" cards and flowers in the hospital room. They kept multiplying like rabbits, which confused him. Before the incident at Kannabi Bridge, virtually nobody other than a handful of people paid him any mind. He didn't have that many friends and most of the kids from his old graduation class treated him like a joke.

He supposed there was nothing quite like everyone thinking he died. Now people realized how much they'd miss him.

Most of the time, people managed to plant their gifts in the hospital room without waking him, but he'd woken up a couple of times to see who his mystery visitors were. Gai had visited him at least twice, while Kakashi had yet to show his face. Obito even talked with Gai a little, not that he remembered much of the conversation. The doctors had him on a morphine drip, so he'd probably rambled a lot of embarrassing nonsense.

He'd been asleep for five hours, sleeping the dreamless sleep of the deeply sedated. When the painkillers finally started to wear off, he opened his eye and started to stir. This time, he felt something furry tucked beneath his arm. Slowly, he lowered his head to find a purple teddy bear and a note. "What the…?"

Obito reached for the piece of paper, opened it with his thumb, and groaned. "We're glad you're home," he read aloud, then proceeded to roll his eye over the next line, "because none of us could **bear** the thought of losing you." The second half of the card was covered in signatures, each of which he recognized from all the geezers and grannies at the village-operated retirement home.

The pun was terrible— _un_ _ **bear**_ _able_ , his brain told him, which only made him cringe more—but the well-wishes were welcome. ' _If there's some truth to what the doctors and Rin told me, that my injuries are too bad for me to return to active duty, maybe I can volunteer more._ ' But his brain had other questions.

' _I've been a chūnin for almost a year. Is that enough time for me to collect a chūnin level retirement pension? Am I eligible for veteran disability status, since my injuries took place on a battlefield? How much of my medical expenses will be covered by the village? What's this going to cost my grandma? And if I can't go back to active duty…_ ' And that was his worst fear now. ' _…what can I do with myself?_ '

"Hey, _ojii-chan_ …?" He watched as Madara rolled over. That haggard, weathered face squinted at him underneath the fluorescent light. Obito held out the bear. "Want it? I think it has lavender in its stuffing or something, because it smells really nice." Like old lady potpourri.

"Why do you want to share your gifts? Your friends got that toy with you in mind."

"Because I'm a grown-ass man. I don't need toys anymore," Obito grumbled. "I don't have any use for it, and…I dunno. I feel kind of bad that nobody's sending you stuff." They just came to stare at him like he was an exhibit on display someplace, or an animal in a zoo. That didn't sit right with him. Sure, he'd read in the history books about all the awful shit Madara allegedly did, but he was just a tired old man now.

"You're a generous boy." Madara smirked. "I wonder…" Obito raised an eyebrow. "Are you feeling generous enough to share some of your candy with me or—"

"Fuck off. That's _mine_."

…

The following day, Fugaku-taichou's wife came to visit with her little boy. Itachi didn't fidget and run around the way most normal kids did. When Mikoto asked him to sit in place, he did as he was told. However, his big black eyes kept returning to Obito's face and the spot where the boy's right arm used to be. Every time Obito looked back at him, Itachi averted his gaze.

"Itachi," Mikoto warned, "don't stare at him like that. It's rude."

"It's fine," he lied. As insecure as he felt, Obito didn't want to give the boy's pregnant mother any trouble. Mikoto would give birth to her second child in just a few more months. That was a genuine thing to be happy about.

But hearing that he now had permission to stare at Obito's face, Itachi kept at it. He left his seat and moved closer, reaching out to touch the older boy. "Does it hurt?" he asked, pointing.

"Nah." He grinned at the kid. "It's nothing compared to being squished by a giant rock."

"Where'd your arm go?"

"It got ripped off." He saw the warning glances coming from Mikoto and realized any gory details beyond that wouldn't be welcome.

"Where'd your eye go?"

And for this, the old man turned around to look at the young mother and her son. He already heard from Obito what he did, but Mikoto was married to the clan head. _This_ was a question she wanted to hear from Obito as well.

"I thought I was gonna die," Obito prefaced, "and my teammate's eye was badly damaged earlier on the mission. I figured I wasn't going to need it anymore, so…so I gave it to him." Mikoto's lip and nose twitched, but she didn't say anything. "Mikoto _oba-san_? That's _fine_ , isn't it? Kakashi's not in any trouble, is he?"

She opened her mouth to say something, but Itachi changed the conversation by asking another question. This time, he moved close enough to touch Obito's face. The boy was gentle about it, letting his hot little hands simply touch over the damaged side. "Are you gonna be stuck like this forever?"

For that, he bit his lip to stop it from trembling because that had turned into his greatest fear. He'd feel trapped, _confined_.

"Itachi, that's enough." Mikoto took him by the hand, murmured a few quick apologies, and left. The little boy's eyes were filled with pity, but Obito didn't want that.

…

"It's okay. I won't tell him the flowers are from you. Heaven forbid you lose any man cred by buying flowers for another guy." Rin had to tease him at least a little bit, hoping to put a bit more pep back in her teammate's step, but it wasn't working. If anything, Kakashi was more somber than before. "What's the matter? Aren't you happy that Obito's alive?"

"Of course I am." Those were the first four words he'd uttered since they made it back to Konoha with Obito and Madara in tow. And by now, the whole of the village knew about the strange old Uchiha in Konoha General.

A few morbidly curious kids walked the halls of the hospital and poked their heads through the door, only for an angry maid to force them out. According to the chief doctors, the KMPF seemed to be going on patrol much more regularly near the hospital than they had in the past. One told Rin that he could have sworn the Uchiha police officers were trying to figure out where the old man was.

And Obito had a long road to recovery and couldn't come home anytime soon. While Kakashi and Rin continued to go on adventures and prepare for their next major mission to assist Minato-sensei and the village, Obito patiently counted down the minutes to his next reconstructive surgery, tissue transplant, or physical therapy appointment.

"So why don't you go in there to talk to him? He asks about you, too." Surely Kakashi knew that. "He said the two of you were finally starting to get along."

She saw the answer in Kakashi's body language. He kept poking at his eyelid, rubbing the scarred flesh with a bare fingertip. "Kakashi…"

"I can't face him," Kakashi confessed. "I couldn't pull him out. All I did was stand there and take his eye. I have half a mind to give it back to him. He isn't dying. He's going to need it. His clan thinks I—"

He felt Rin touch his shoulders and gently push him toward the hospital room. "He needs to hear all this from you, not me. I can't be your messenger forever. Go on." If Kakashi needed to be reassured, then she could do that for him. "It's not like he can bite you from a hospital bed."

Yet she felt Kakashi's heels dig into the linoleum floor as she pushed. "Come on. _Please_. He wants to see you, I promise."

Kakashi shook his head. He just gave the flowers to Rin and left. Losing a teammate had shaken him to his core and he couldn't stop blaming himself. While he was certain he'd work up the nerve to approach Obito later, today was not that day. "I can't, Rin. I'm sorry."

"Kakashi!" But even she had to fake some of that cheeriness, hoping it would turn into the genuine thing. It _was_ painful to look at the full extent of Obito's injuries and even more painful to remind herself that he'd probably never be a shinobi again. "Come back!"

It was all he'd ever wanted to be. His clan only valued strong shinobi and took great pride in their prowess as one of Konoha's four great noble clans. Their elite members ended up in the Konohagakure Military Police Force, but Obito's dreams soared higher than even that. He didn't want to be a police officer. He wanted to be _Hokage_.

But he lost an eye and an arm. Most of his organs were in terrible shape. Most of his bones were so badly broken that they probably wouldn't heal properly. All he had to look forward to was chronic pain, permanent disfigurement, and watching as Team Minato carried on without him. Right now, his only hope was physical therapy, but Rin wasn't going to hold her breath for a miracle.

But a best friend was a best friend for life. Obito was practically family. Through better or worse, no matter what happened, Rin would always be there to look out for him. Even if his dreams were dashed and he fell into despair, the least she could do was give him a shoulder to cry on. ' _Obito's resilient. He'll bounce back._ '

"Rin?" She heard his voice and her heart jumped. "Kakashi?" He sounded so tired. Rin slid the door open and let her eyes adjust to the hospital lighting. Obito was in a hospital gown, his bed sheet crumpled at his waist so his upper body could sit upright. His left arm was attached to an IV drip, which Rin noticed was almost empty. Then he grinned at her almost from ear to ear and let loose a slurred, goofy greeting. "Heeeeeeey…"

' _Just how much morphine are they giving him, anyway!?_ '

" _Hey_ yourself," Rin replied, forcing out a smile. She tried her best to ignore the old man on the other side of the room. Once she realized a curtain could be pulled as a divider between the two patients, she pulled it. "Kakashi was trying to figure out if he should come in or not. I tried to tell him you wanted to see him, too, but…" She shook her head. "He's taking this pretty badly."

"…figures," Obito murmured, curling over so he could look at Rin a little more carefully.

Fluorescent lighting didn't make anyone look good. It was bright, slightly greenish, and showed every imperfection in a girl's makeup. Her eye shadow was slightly smeared on the left side, leaving a stripe Obito would never have noticed in natural light. Her eyeliner, subtle as she'd made it, was also a tad smudged. She'd wiped that eye a couple of times before coming here.

Rin took a deep breath, thinking that she'd chew Kakashi out for this later. Once again, she'd have to speak _for_ him. "He blamed himself for everything. Even when some of the homicide officers in the KMPF told him they suspected foul play, he didn't contradict them. He just let them talk to him like—"

Obito squinted, grimacing. "They actually thought he killed me?" Rin nodded. " _Fuck_."

But Rin didn't find this funny, not in the slightest. "Fugaku-taichou was under the impression Kakashi was bullying you."

Obito flopped his arm over his face, attempting to face-palm, but missed. It hurt like a bitch, too, so he made an awkward noise. "No, no. He didn't. Sometimes he made me _mad_ and sometimes he said stuff that got under my skin, but he never… _shit_. Are they _still_ giving him a hard time?"

Slowly, Rin nodded her head. "I'm honestly more worried about him than I am about you. You always bounce back, you know? I think this opened up a lot of old wounds for him."

"…yeah. I can see where it would." More of the drugs dripped into his arm. He felt like he was sinking into the bed. "Take care of him, okay? I'm gonna be fine. He's clearly the one who actually _needs_ it."

She didn't like the change in his tone. It felt cynical, even a tad sarcastic. Maybe it was the drugs, but maybe it was the fact he only ever left that bed to use the bathroom. Or that every guest who came in here looked at him with pity in their eyes. Now even she had done it.

"I got it all figured out, Rin." She hissed in a breath. "I know what I'm gonna be when I grow up."

All that gung-ho attitude was lost from his words. She wanted to snap him out of it, to calm him down, but he just kept _smiling_. It wasn't genuine. She knew him too well. That was sarcasm at its absolute worst.

"I'm gonna be single, that's for sure. Just some lonely-ass cripple everyone's gonna forget, probably with a thousand cats and a paper bag over my head…" And the fact he heard a low wheeze of a laugh from the other side of the curtain didn't help. "Do you think it's easy sitting around like this, hearing doctor after doctor tell me there's not much of anything they can do? That I can't go out there and protect you? Or work on a combo attack with Kakashi, when we're _finally_ …after all this time…"

"Obito, I didn't—"

But he realized he'd said too much. His eye started to well up with tears, so he wiped his arm across his face. The tears came out of his nostrils, too, so Rin reached with a tissue to dab at his nose. That arm wrapped tightly around her, pulling her close to his chest. She felt every single sob leave his lungs, as well as the disturbingly _malleable_ softness on his right side. It seemed to move out of the way, just to give her chest more room to press against his in that hug.

"I'm sorry, Rin," he whispered. "I didn't mean to snap at you. I'm just…it's _hard_ to put on a good face and act like everything's fine when it's not. I'm just scared that if I tell people how I really feel, they'll stop visiting. Then they'll forget me and…"

"Ssssssh…" She stroked his back, hoping to calm him down from the sobs. "It's okay. If you can't tell _me_ how you really feel, then…" Rin shook her head and just kept petting his hair. "I won't lie to you and tell you everything's gonna be okay, but I promise you this. I'll always be there, even if you never go on another mission as long as you live."

He probably hadn't been given a chance to cry since the incident. Visitor after visitor, he put on that fake smile and acted like the same upbeat, chipper kid he'd always presented himself to be. Of course that hurt. He probably felt like no one cared.

"We'll grow old together. One day, your grandkids are gonna play with my grandkids and we'll embarrass them both, just like your _obaa-chan_ does with you." Tears soaked her entire shoulder. "I didn't mean to make this about Kakashi. I just…I wanted you to know why he hasn't come in here."

"It's fine." And that wasn't a lie. "Just tell him to come see me when he feels like he can. It's not like I'm going anywhere."

…

When she finally left, he realized he blew it. ' _If I act like that all the time, then there's no reason for her to keep coming._ ' Next time, he promised he'd joke around and act like his old self for her sake. He'd keep putting on that mask until he turned back to normal. It could take a lifetime, but—

A horrible squirming sensation twisted at his right side. "Ngh!" Obito clutched at his chest, realizing the feeling came from the area Madara had stitched up. "Hey…hey, _ojii-chan_?" The silhouette moved from the other side of the curtain. "What did you use to put me back together?"

"I told you," Madara murmured in a tired voice. "Hashirama's cells. He had an unsurpassed regenerative ability. If it hasn't killed you by now, it means your body accepted the tissue."

"But it's—" _God_. Not even the morphine could dull that pain. "It's moving on its own." When he glanced down, the tissue beneath the fabric started to squirm around like a colony of mice beneath a blanket. Obito wanted to throw up from both the pain and his disgust.

It was all he could do to hit the panic button. ' _Help. Someone. Anyone!_ ' It continued to squirm, twisting and grabbing at a lung. He gasped, trying to take deeper breaths in an attempt to stop the aches from getting worse. It didn't help. The more he moved, the more _it_ moved. "I think it's trying to break away. Can't you…can't you do something?!"

All he heard was silence. By the time the medics rushed in to check on him, they could all see the tissue contorting and twisting in horrid ways. By the time Obito finally passed out, one doctor called another to get the camera. "I've never seen anything like it…"

There, poking out of the boy's side, closer to his _hip_ than his shoulder, was an emaciated, weak-looking white arm.


End file.
